ALIAS MAE
Australian footwear label
Alias Mae is an Australian-owned leather footwear label with a quietly devoted following that stretches well beyond its origins. Founded in August 2011, the brand was built on a simple but uncompromising idea: that beautifully made shoes, crafted by hand in small runs, would always find their people.
Each style is produced in deliberately limited quantities — sometimes as few as eight pairs per colourway — giving every shoe a rarity that mass-market labels simply can’t replicate. That scarcity isn’t a marketing tactic. It’s a reflection of how Alias Mae has always operated: slowly, carefully, and with an eye for detail that shows in every stitch.
The result is a brand that sits comfortably in the space between accessible luxury and everyday wearability. Leather that softens with wear. Silhouettes that feel considered without being fussy. Colours chosen to last a season and then some.
The Work
Critical Design was brought on to design Alias Mae’s seasonal footwear catalogue — a print piece that needed to do justice to both the product and the brand’s understated aesthetic.
The catalogue leads with campaign imagery that captures Alias Mae’s mood: confident, editorial, unhurried. Inside, each style is presented cleanly across a white ground, allowing the leather textures, colourways and silhouettes to speak without distraction. Typography is kept light and precise, consistent with a label that lets the product do the talking.
The finished piece works as both a trade tool and a brand artefact — something a stockist would keep on a desk, and a customer would pick up twice.
Alias Mae is stocked at selected boutiques across Australia and New Zealand, with a US launch on the horizon.
